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While India’s finance minister Pranab Mukherjee announced two billion Indian rupees (US$ 39.8 million) "to incentivise agricultural research" in his 2012-13 budget speech on 16 March, the hike was a mere 7.6 per cent over 2011-12.
Meagre crop research spending, at a time when the country is grappling with suicides by farmers due to heavy crop losses and mounting debts, contrasts with new allocations for a mission to Mars and a 51 per cent hike for space research.
The three strategic departments of atomic energy, defence and space together cornered about half the total outlay of Rs 402 billion (US$ eight billion) for science. Taken together, research in agriculture, health, atomic energy, defence, earth sciences, environment and forests, new and renewable energy and space saw a hike of 18 per cent...
A farm in Shahada, Maharashtra. Shot by Raama, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
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